The World of Springfield has been a huge hit
for Playmates. Already over a hundred figures and a couple dozen
playsets, it looks to have at least a couple good years left. So how
can they expand on that license?

They tried Blockos. That didn't work
out so well. So now it's time to go in two directions - bigger and
smaller. The bigger figures, reviewed later this week, are 9"
tall and called the Faces of Springfield. The smaller versions are
called Simpsons Mini-Figures, and the first two sets have just been
released.

These sets contain 5 figures each, about
4" tall. The sets are episode themed, with the first two covering
the shows Homer at the Bat, and Deep Space Homer.

There's already a second set of
two episodes planned. One set covers Brother from the Same Planet, and
the other is Homer the Heretic. These are due for shipping in
December.

Packaging - ***1/2
I'm taking off a half star because they aren't collector friendly boxes -
you'll have to destroy them taking the figures out. But otherwise,
they are absolutely perfect.

The front shows the figures
clearly and easily, and the artwork on the boxes is specific to that
episode. There's also an episode synopsis, with trivia and 'did ya
knows' on the back, again all specific to the particular episode.
These boxes are simply terrific examples of creative and added value
packaging.

Sculpting - ***1/2
The sculpting is excellent, certainly as good as the WOS figures.
There's only a couple minor nits that cost them a half star.

A couple of the figures - Carl
and the Monkey - have trouble standing on their own in these particular
poses. That's always disappointing in this scale.

Also, the helmets on both the
Astronaut and Homer in the Deep Space set are designed in such a way as to
block a large portion of their faces. Other than that though, these
sculpts are great. I particularly love a number of the poses, such as
Barney and Wiggum.

Paint - ****
At this scale, paint operations can be tricky and tough. There's no
problem here, and they also included some excellent stickers with great
detail.

In the close up shot of Wiggum,
you can see that even his hat sticker has Springfield Police Dept printed on
it cleanly enough to read.

There's a number of colors on
each of these figures, and they did a great job with clean lines and
consistent colors. Only the Doctor in the Deep Space set had slightly
funky eyes, but one out of ten characters is pretty damn good.

Quality - ****
The figures are all solid and made from fairly stiff PVC. They are
unlikely to wilt or change over time.

Design - ****
As I mentioned in the sculpting section, the poses they selected all work
extremely well. They are all in some form of action shot, but they can
still stand on their own.

Articulation - ***1/2
Aren't these just PVC's? Nope! They are just as articulated as
the standard WOS figures, although I don't know if that's a good thing about
these or a bad thing about WOS.

They have neck, shoulders and
waist, but some of the figures are very limited in their range of motion due
to the sculpt. For example, Wiggum and Barney can't do a whole lot
with their arms.

Still, to get five points of
articulation on something I thought would be solid PVC is a very welcome
surprise.

Value - ***
I picked these up for $10 each at Toys R Us. At $2 each, these are
nice little figures, and well worth the money.

Overall - ****I'm giving these a bump on the overall score, simply because when
taken as a whole they are one of the coolest new little items out this
year. Using the themes really helped, but I can also envision
playsets for these that could be of larger areas, impossible in the WOS
scale.

I'm hoping we see dozens more of these sets,
and I hope that demand is great enough to show Playmates that they have hit
on another winner. Let's also hope that other licenses follows suit
(can you say Muppets?)

Where to Buy -
I picked up both sets at a Toys R Us in Michigan. If we're getting
them, everyone should be getting them. You can also pick them up
on-line: